My Sweet Valentine

by Annie Groves

  Watching Dulcie acknowledge Agnes’s praise very much as though she considered it to be no less than her due, Olive felt that now wasn’t the time to spoil things by reminding Agnes that Dulcie had had no alternative, given her age and the new law the Minister for Labour had proposed. It did, though, make her think about how she’d be feeling if it was Tilly who was obliged to go and work in munitions. There was no getting away from the fact that not only was the work itself dangerous, but also that the munitions factories along the Thames were, as Dulcie had rightly said, a known target for the Luftwaffe’s bombs. Of course, Tilly wasn’t old enough yet to get caught up in the Government decree that young women who were not either married with children or involved in reserved occupations had to go into munitions. Plus the fact that she was working at Barts meant that she was in a reserved occupation. Not that that meant that Tilly was safe from Hitler’s bombs – none of them was.

  ‘Come on, Drew,’ Tilly announced, getting to her feet. ‘We’re on fire-watch duties tonight.’

  The awfulness of what had happened might have filled her with a constant fear for Drew’s safety and a dread that she might lose him, but she certainly wasn’t going to let it stop her from doing her duty. Her fear was for losing Drew, not for anything that might happen to herself.

  ‘Of course I won’t be able to do any fire-watching now that I’m going into munitions,’ Dulcie announced determinedly. ‘Not with me working nights every other month, and then needing to make sure that I get me sleep so that I can concentrate on what I’m doing. Very important work it is, filling shells and that.’

  Olive managed to refrain from pointing out that Sally’s work as a nurse was also very important and involved working nights but that Sally still managed to do her fire-watching as well. Knowing Dulcie as she did, she realised there would be little point.

  ‘You didn’t have to do this tonight, you know,’ Drew told Tilly once they were outside and he had checked the thankfully empty sky. ‘I’m sure that your mother would have got someone to stand in for you.’

  ‘I don’t want her to do that,’ Tilly replied. ‘I’m not going to let what happened turn me into a coward who can’t play her part in doing her duty, Drew, and anyway, it’s you I’m scared for, not myself. I know what you being a reporter means. Every time there’s a bombing raid you’ll be off wanting to be there to get your story, putting yourself in danger.’

  ‘Yes, it is my job,’ Drew agreed gently, ‘and like you, Tilly, I feel that I want to do whatever I can to defeat Hitler and everything that he stands for. That’s why I came here: so that I could report back to people at home in America exactly what’s happening, so that they can understand and so that hopefully we’ll join in your fight against Hitler. If I can’t do that job properly then how can I face your boys in uniform, knowing how much more they are doing?’

  ‘What you’re doing is important, Drew. I know that. I’m just so afraid for you … for us.’

  ‘I know,’ Drew comforted her, reaching for her hand and squeezing it reassuringly. It hurt him to see her bright optimistic trusting confidence stripped from her by the shocking reality of war.

  They were halfway down the road when they heard the first rising wail of the air-raid warning, both of them stopping to look at one another and then up at the sky.

  ‘You go back,’ Drew urged Tilly. ‘I’ll come with you and then ask Mr Edwards to take your place and be on fire-watch with me.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Tilly …’

  ‘No. I want to be with you, Drew, whatever happens, and besides, I’m not running away from doing my duty. What kind of person would I be if I did? I might be afraid of losing you but I’m not afraid for myself.’

  ‘You won’t lose me, Tilly. And nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m extra specially lucky, you see.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Tilly demanded, raising her voice so that he would be able to hear her above the banshee scream of the siren as it fought with the ominous thrum of the engines of the incoming enemy planes.

  ‘I don’t think it, I know it,’ Drew told her promptly. ‘I must be lucky, Tilly, because you love me. I couldn’t be any luckier than that.’

  When Olive heard the air-raid siren her first anxious thoughts were for Tilly, although she urged Agnes and Dulcie to head immediately for the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, quickly starting to gather up everything they would need, and putting on the kettle to make a Thermos of hot tea.

  ‘You fill the Thermos for me, will you, Agnes?’ she instructed, going to the hall to collect her coat and headscarf. ‘I’m going to go and change places with Tilly.’

  Outside, the darkness was already being probed by the bright beam of the searchlights, the dull thunder of the batteries accompanied by the trace of the rounds they were firing into the sky. Olive didn’t pay them any attention, though, as she ran down the road towards Drew and Tilly.

  ‘Tilly, you go back and get in the Anderson,’ she instructed when she reached them. ‘I’ll do the fire-watch with Drew.’

  ‘No, Mum, I’m staying here,’ Tilly told her. When Olive opened her mouth to protest Tilly forestalled her, saying, ‘When you asked us all to join your fire-watch group you didn’t say anything about me being treated like a child and sent out of danger every time we had an air raid. I’m not a child and I’m not going to be stopped from doing what I should. Other girls my age and younger are doing their bit and I’m going to do mine. If you were me you’d be the same.’

  What Tilly was saying was true, Olive knew. As much as she wanted to beg her to seek the comparative safety of the Anderson shelter in their garden, another part of her felt desperately proud of her daughter for insisting on staying, and she recognised that there was no point in trying to argue with her.

  ‘Go on, Mum, you go back,’ Tilly was urging her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Robbins, I’ll take care of her,’ Drew assured her.

  ‘Very well,’ Olive agreed, but she couldn’t stop herself from turning round to look back down the road once she had reached her own front gate. Tilly and Drew weren’t watching her, though. They were walking close together, Tilly pushing the barrow whilst Drew carried the stirrup pump and the rake. Once it would have been her side that Tilly would have wanted to be close to.

  On their own now, Drew looked up at the sky. ‘I’ve just checked my watch, they’re coming in every minute.’

  ‘And heading for Chelsea, by the look of it,’ Tilly responded to Drew’s comment, gasping as he suddenly grabbed hold of her and yelled, ‘Down, Tilly, down!’, pushing her to the ground as he spoke, just as one of the bombers came in so low above them that Tilly thought at first it would hit the houses. Mercifully, it seemed that on this occasion Article Row wasn’t the bombers’ target. Instead, as she had already said, it seemed to be Chelsea that was getting the worst of the Luftwaffe’s attack, the sky in that direction so red that Tilly felt as though the whole of that part of London must be on fire.

  In the Anderson shelter Olive was counting not just the hours but the minutes and the seconds as wave after wave of bombers came over, her heart in her mouth with anxiety for Tilly.

  ‘I hope that munitions factory where I’m going to be working doesn’t get hit,’ said Dulcie crossly. ‘That’s all I need, for the ruddy factory to go up in flames and me having to find meself another job after the trouble I’ve gone to, and handing in me notice at Selfridges. Ever so sorry to see me go, they were, as well. But it’s like I told them, I have to do me duty.’

  Olive winced as yet another loud explosion momentarily drowned out Dulcie’s voice, and Agnes jumped visibly.

  It was dawn before it was over; the longest air raid of the war so far, as Sergeant Dawson told them when he called round on his way down the Row to check that everyone was all right, after the all clear had sounded.

  ‘There’s over a thousand been killed, so I’ve heard, and more than two thousand injured. There’s whole streets gone,
and hardly a London borough that’s not been hit. There’s still fires on Gray’s Inn Road, and on Oxford Street …’

  ‘Selfridges?’ Dulcie asked.

  ‘Yes, that got hit, but not badly.’

  Sally confirmed what Sergeant Dawson had already told them when she came back from her night shift.

  ‘One of the ARP men amongst the injured said that Hitler sent so many bombers over in revenge for us bombing the centre of Berlin last week. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know that we’ve never had so many injured people in.’

  Sally looked exhausted, Olive thought, and no wonder.

  ‘One of our doctors told me that Piccadilly is inches deep in broken glass, and that hardly a building has been left undamaged, and that there are fires everywhere from the bombs and from damaged gas mains.’

  ‘Hitler might think he’s breaking our spirit but we won’t let him,’ said Tilly fiercely. ‘He can destroy London’s buildings but he will never break its spirit.’

  Three days later, after an attack that was even heavier than the one the city had suffered on the Wednesday, it seemed to Olive, as she drove one of the WVS mobile canteens into one of the city’s worst hit areas, that Tilly had been right. Despite the damage to the city and its buildings, and the terrible loss of life and injuries suffered by its people, far from being cowed by the onslaught, Londoners were even more determined to withstand everything that Hitler could throw at them.

  The raid, which had started at 9.15 on the Saturday night, continued relentlessly until 4.15 on the Sunday morning. This time the Luftwaffe had concentrated its attack on the Thames, from Tower Bridge downstream to the docks in the east.

  At church on Sunday people spoke sombrely of what had happened, and those who had been lost, whilst Olive watched Tilly anxiously. Her daughter might be going to work and fulfilling her fire-watching duties with the kind of determined courage that would make any mother proud, but she wasn’t eating properly, picking at her food, looking strained and on edge unless Drew was with her.

  Oblivious to her mother’s watchful concern, Tilly smiled up at Drew when he came round for lunch after church. ‘That was a really good piece you wrote about Wednesday’s bombing.’

  ‘And you, of course, aren’t at all prejudiced in my favour,’ Drew laughed.

  ‘Certainly not. You are a wonderful writer, Drew. You make things come so alive. The stories you wrote about those people you interviewed … they made me feel so proud to be your girl. You wait, they’ll be giving you your own byline soon.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel I should be doing more than just writing about the war.’

  ‘What kind of more?’ Tilly asked him, alarmed.

  ‘Well, there’s Wilder in uniform …’

  ‘But he’s a pilot; you’re a reporter. Drew, promise me that you won’t do anything silly like volunteering.’

  She was getting agitated and upset, and Drew was immediately remorseful.

  ‘No, of course I won’t.’

  ‘Promise me,’ Tilly begged him.

  ‘I give you my word, Tilly. As an American I couldn’t go into a British uniform anyway, although that wasn’t actually what I meant. I was wondering if I could volunteer in some other way. Join the ARP, perhaps. Just do something.’

  ‘You’re doing your bit writing about the war, especially the pieces you send back to America,’ Tilly assured him. She didn’t understand what was happening to her sometimes. She’d always thought of herself as a plucky type of girl but since she’d fallen in love with Drew – since that night when she had thought she had lost him – she’d begun to feel as though she hadn’t known herself at all, she was so afraid of losing him. Was this how her mother had felt when her father had been ill? Had she, too, been this afraid?

  FIFTEEN

  ‘It’s so awful that St Andrew’s has gone,’ Tilly said, holding out her teacup as Olive lifted the pot to offer refills. The whole household, apart from Sally, who was still at work, sat eating their evening meal and mourning the destruction of the famous Holborn church. ‘Drew took photographs of it only in January.’

  ‘Yes. Mrs Windle is very upset about its loss. It was the largest Wren church in London after St Paul’s, and we’re lucky we still have that standing. She told me that if it wasn’t for the St Paul’s fire-watching team being on hand, so many incendiaries fell on it during the last bombing raid that it would have burned down. We’ve lost Gray’s Inn Great Hall, as well, and all the books in it. Over thirty thousand, Mrs Morrison said.’ Olive couldn’t help giving a small shiver. With so many bombs falling in Holborn it was a miracle that Article Row had been spared.

  Not that Nancy saw it that way. She had come round earlier in the day to complain to Olive that the washing she had hung out to dry on Monday had been covered in ash and smuts. ‘Well, as to that,’ Dulcie butted in, putting down her knife and fork as she stopped eating the potato and leftover minced-up joint and cabbage that Olive had fried up for their evening meal, ‘today at the factory there was one girl that got scalped on account of her not tying her hair out of the way, like we’re supposed to. The whole lot was ripped out,’ Dulcie went on with obvious relish. ‘Carted her off to hospital screaming her head off, they did.’

  ‘Oh, Dulcie, how awful!’ Agnes gasped.

  Olive sighed under her breath before saying briskly, ‘I don’t think we really need to hear about that whilst we’re eating, thank you, Dulcie.’

  It was unseasonably cold for May, even though they were only a few days into the month, and since the previous Sunday, they had had what was being called ‘Double Summer Time’, which meant that it would be light until gone ten o’clock so that, even if Hitler did bomb them, it wouldn’t be until after dark so no one needed to do down to the shelters before ten o’clock. The light evenings were something else of which Nancy didn’t approve, announcing with some triumph to Olive that she had seen ‘that boy the Dawsons took in out far later than anyone his age should be, and roaming all over the place with that riffraff he’s taken up with. I’ve complained to Sergeant Dawson about the racket they make going into people’s gardens without a by-your-leave, but of course he won’t do anything about it.’

  ‘It’s only the gardens of the empty houses they go into, Nancy,’ Olive had felt obliged to defend Barney, although in reality she herself wasn’t very keen on having the two older boys around, especially after what Archie Dawson had told her, but she felt that had been said in confidence to her, and she certainly wasn’t going to betray it to a troublemaker like Nancy.

  Poor Archie Dawson. Olive felt sorry for him. He wanted to do his best for Barney but Barney seemed determined to ignore the police sergeant’s warnings to steer clear of the Farley brothers.

  ‘One of the other girls at the factory was telling me that in some of the big shelters, they’ve got dances going on some nights now, with music and everything,’ Dulcie continued. ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of a dance meself. It’s been ages since I went to the Palais, what with you lot all paired up and Wilder flying his ruddy plane. Still, at least he’s got leave this weekend, and he’s going to take me out. I’ll bet our Rick will be sorry that he isn’t going to be here to watch the FA Cup Final. He’s supported the Gunners since he was a kid. Mind you, there’s a lot say that that Preston North End lot are going to win it.’

  ‘Drew’s going,’ Tilly told her. ‘One of the sports reporters has offered him a ticket. He’s going to write about it for his American paper, to show that Londoners are getting on with their lives despite the bombs.’

  Olive repressed a small sigh. Her refusal to allow Tilly to become engaged to Drew, never mind marry him, had only intensified their relationship.

  ‘You shouldn’t neglect your friends just because you’re dating Drew,’ Olive had tried to counsel her. ‘You should still go out with Agnes, Sally and Dulcie. You used to have so much fun together.’

  ‘I don’t want fun any more, I just want to be with Drew,’ Tilly had retaliated, adding, �
�and, anyway, it isn’t just me. Agnes wants to be with Ted, and Sally wants to be with George. You must have felt the same about Dad – at least, you must have done if you loved him as much as I love Drew.’

  Had there been an accusation in those words? Olive didn’t know. She had loved Jim. She had loved him dearly. But not with the fierce turbulent passion she could sense in Tilly. She just wasn’t the passionate type. Some women weren’t. She had been grateful to Jim, and happy in the quiet gentleness of their love. Tilly’s intensity worried her because she feared that where there was the capacity for so much love there was also the capacity for a great deal of pain. If only Tilly could see and accept that it was her mother’s desire to protect her from that pain that motivated her instead of insisting that Olive didn’t understand her and, even worse, was deliberately standing in the way of her happiness.

  Finishing her tea, Tilly kept one eye on her watch. Drew would be coming round for her soon. They were going to go for a walk in Hyde Park, despite the chill in the air.

  Thankfully they hadn’t had heavy bombing since the two dreadful raids in April, and already some kind of order had been restored to the city.

  Drew, who was interested in such things, had told Tilly that every brick, every piece of wood – everything, in fact, that could be salvaged to be used again – was being, whilst the ships that came over from America with much-needed supplies for a beleaguered Britain were returning to the United States carrying some of the rubble, which was also being used in Britain itself, to make runways. Nothing was to be wasted.

  ‘How’s Sally?’ Tilly asked her mother.

  They’d heard that Sally’s home of Liverpool was being targetted by the Luftwaffe, who had started bombing the city on 1 May, and now, six days later, were still doing so.

  ‘She isn’t saying very much,’ Olive answered, ‘but she’s bound to be upset. Liverpool is where she grew up, after all.’